ChatGPT writes inflation fiction

I've been playing around with ChatGPT lately. It's pretty impressive, and I've been having a lot of fun with it. It's surprisingly competent at writing body inflation stories, but I don't see it replacing humans any time soon.

Similar to what I did with NovelAI, I fed it my proposed entry into the inflation-themed version of the Bulwer-Lytton contest to see what it could come up with.

Side note: when I didn't specify body inflation, it wrote a horror story about economic inflation.


Prompt:

 

Write the worst body inflation story ever beginning with this sentence: Of those who survived, some would say it began with an eerie breeze while others would recall the sudden and inexplicable tightening of waistbands, but none would ever forget the day that The Blimping began and took the members of the Amhearst High cheerleading squad as its first victims.

Response:

Of those who survived, some would say it began with an eerie breeze while others would recall the sudden and inexplicable tightening of waistbands, but none would ever forget the day that The Blimping began and took the members of the Amhearst High cheerleading squad as its first victims.

At first, the girls didn't think much of it, simply brushing off the strange sensations as indigestion or anxiety from their upcoming cheer competition. But soon, the tightness in their waistbands turned into a full-blown expansion of their bodies, as if they were being pumped full of air like balloons.

As their cheerleading uniforms stretched to their limits, the girls panicked, frantically trying to stop the bizarre inflation. But it was no use - the Blimping continued to ravage their bodies, swelling their arms, legs, and even their faces until they were unrecognizable.

The other students watched in horror as the cheerleaders were transformed into grotesquely swollen blimps, their once-toned bodies now bloated and distorted beyond recognition. Some tried to help, but the Blimping seemed to have a mind of its own, spreading rapidly throughout the school and engulfing anyone in its path.

Panic and chaos ensued as more and more students were caught in the Blimping's grasp, their bodies ballooning to unimaginable sizes until they were too big to move or even breathe. The school was evacuated, but it was too late - the damage had been done, and The Blimping left a trail of destruction in its wake.

 

Of those who survived, many were left scarred both physically and emotionally, their once-normal lives forever changed by the inexplicable and terrifying phenomenon of The Blimping.

 

biff977
biff977's picture

Interesting. How do you feel ChatGPT compares to NovelAI when it comes to following a cohesive storyline with minimal tweaking?

LutherVKane
LutherVKane's picture

From my limited exploration, ChatGPT seem stronger at writing coherent stories that conform to what was requested, but it's limited to fairly short texts. The response above was written entirely from the prompt with no tweaking or editing. I'm curious what results we could get if the model were powering a full-featured story-generation app like NovelAI.

biff977
biff977's picture

Definitely interesting and amusing to play with, but I can see the constraints you were talking about.  NovelAI needs a lot more guiding/tweaking but can make a much more comprehensive story, while ChatGPT builds a pretty coherent story but it limited to just what you initially input at the prompt.  It does have a fairly good knowledge of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, as well as the nature of three-course chewing gum.

Not knowing what constitutes an inappropriate request for ChatGPT, I haven't delved too deeply into more creative storylines.  I'm not sure whether the site bans users (or if they are set up to even do that) should they cross some sort of invisible line.

biff977
biff977's picture

So I've experimented with ChatGPT on and off (more off than on). Aside from its occasionally overwhelmed servers, one annoyance is it's slightly uptight/moralistic angle at storytelling. If anyone else has experimented with ChatGPT, has anyone else noticed this quality, and has anyone found a workaround that lets you create grittier or darker storylines? I feel there are unseen parameters that keep stories from becoming too graphic or over the top, which is fine, but not everything needs to have a cheery ending. 

LutherVKane
LutherVKane's picture

Yes, this is definitely true, and boy do I have some opinions on this.

I suspect there are two teams working on ChatGPT: one is trying to make it as capable as possible, the other is trying to prevent it from being used to create porn. These goals are inherently contradictory.

For the past few weeks, OpenAI has been updating its naughtiness filters pretty much constantly. They have tried and continue to try various ways of responding to requests they consider inappropriate. Sometimes the responses are pretty ridiculous. I really should compile a Greatest Hits list sometime. ChatGPT has refused to fulfill some requests, scolded me for making inappropriate requests, even once gave a response that was basically "here's how it would go if these people had healthy conflict resolution skills." When it does fulfill the request, it'll often steer the story to a peaceful, happy ending even if it seems improbable under the circumstances.

I've found you can still get some darker results if you approach inappropriate themes indirectly, depicting inflation as something that just happens to occur rather than something that a person maliciously does. Having ChatGPT generate a story, and then requesting tweaks to that story sometimes works as well. But keep in mind it's currently a moving target; they're always making updates to their content control systems, so what worked in the morning might not in the evening.